It's Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Should You Think Before You Pink?

Even though my favorite color is green, I've picked up a lot of pink products over the years—dozens of pink-lidded cartons of yogurt, a pink chopping knife, pink breath mints, pink lipstick, and even a pair of pink boxing gloves, all in the name of breast cancer research. I've always felt satisfaction snapping up pink-ribbon products, believing that I was helping to raise a significant amount of money to help prevent or cure a disease that will strike 250,000 women this year alone.

But these days I don't have a lot of money to give to charity (hello, recession) or spend on things I don't need, so when I do buy a "breast cancer" product I want to make sure that a good chunk of my purchase is going to the actual cause and not to some foundation's overpaid president, or to a manufacturer more interested in cashing in on a disease than actually funding its cure.

Not that I want to rain on anybody's pink parade, but I also don't want to be pink'd.

To bone up on pink-ribbon politics, I tuned into the "Think before you pink" campaign launched six years ago by Breast Cancer Action, a national education and activist organization. Thinkbeforeyoupink.org helps consumers figure out which pink-ribbon products do the most good, and blows the whistle on what they call "pinkwashers" (companies that claim to care about breast cancer by promoting a pink ribbon campaign, but manufacture products that may be linked to the disease—like cars that spew exhaust or yogurt with growth hormones).